News that the 23rd Knesset is about to dissolve, plunging Israel into its fourth elections in two years, came as a shock to no one. It was clear to all that the unity deal signed between Likud and Blue and White following the March 2020 election was an arranged marriage and that the match was doomed to fail.
(This essay originally appeared on Arutz Sheva and is reprinted by permission of the author.)
Two small, seemingly unrelated items in the news
This Chanukah we must learn to celebrate the gift of a closed door.
Yeshayahu (26:20) said: “Go my people, come into your chambers and close your door behind you, hide for a moment until the wrath passes.”
It is this verse that the Talmud (Bava Kamma 60b) cites in
President Donald Trump’s policies in the Middle East contributed significantly to changes in the rules of the game in the region, both in the Palestinian and regional contexts.
The primary change was the breaking of the paradigm in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the heart of the
The murderous shooting attack in Vienna on November 2 is one more wake-up call for Europeans who think they’ve nothing to worry about from Islamists. But while the battle appears to be one in which the West is waging a struggle against Islamists, an indicator that the extremists aren’t losing is the way anti-Semitism continues
On Oct. 27, 2018, a white-supremacist gunman sent a wake-up call to American Jews about the always deadly potential for violence from armed extremists. The slaughter of 11 worshippers at a Shabbat-morning service at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh was the worst act of anti-Semitic violence in American history. That
Partisanship has always struck me as curious, the notion that we must vote for a particular political party always and forever, regardless of its current positions, leaders and tendencies. It is worth observing that the Orthodox rabbis who are most vociferous in their support for Joe Biden have always supported every Democrat, without fail, whether Carter, Dukakis,
It’s no surprise that Israelis want Trump while American Jews back Biden. The split isn’t so much about Middle East policy as it is about the nature of the two societies.
Among the least surprising poll numbers to be published recently were the results of the Pew Research Center survey that reports a
Although pro-Trump voices currently dominate American Orthodox discourse, Jews and rabbis in all segments of American Orthodoxy actively support Vice President Biden for president, including Rabbis Menachem Genackand
The beginning of the pandemic was terrifying. As a volunteer EMT in Bergenfield, I was overwhelmed by the amount of death and suffering we witnessed.
Contrary to some reports, all kinds of people died in Bergen County—most were elderly, but some were middle-aged and even young adults, too. Seeing the
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Sept. 18—the eve of Rosh Hashanah—at the age of 87 was a symbol of female empowerment,
Attending the White House signing ceremony on Tuesday of the Abraham Accords—which normalize relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—was both moving and jarring. Standing at the South Lawn, just meters from the Rose Garden where the Oslo Accords were signed 27 years ago on Sept. 13, 1993, the comparison between